Adaptability: The Art of Winning in an Age of Uncertainty

by Max McKeown

This revolutionary new book harnesses the essence of human survival – the ability to adapt – to help people succeed in business and all other aspects of life.Through natural selection, humans have adapted unconsciously to their environment. Strategy and innovation expert, Max McKeown, draws on millions of years of evolution to create a practical and strategic set of rules which take adaption from an involuntary coping strategy to a deliberate winning strategy.To show how adaptability works McKeown looks at a rich set of examples, problems and situations. He includes the 15-year old geneticist working from his basement, and the Italian town that said no to seemingly inevitable change. Along the way, he visits the adaptation of Western technology to the social structures of sub-Saharan Africa and explores how quantum games may solve the world's trickiest problems. He looks inside global corporations like Starbucks, Netflix and McDonald's to see how they flirt with extinction, create internal barriers to adaptation, and adapt to transcend their situation.Adaptability proves that innovation is important but not enough. Strategy, branding, marketing and operations are all useful, but insufficient. And highlights that the ability to adapt smarter and faster than the situation changes is what makes the powerful difference between adapting to cope and adapting to win. 

Genres: Self Help

232 pages, ebook

First published April 3, 2012

About the author

Max McKeown is an English writer, consultant, and researcher specialising in innovation strategy, leadership and culture. He has written six influential books and conducts research with Warwick Business School. He is a fellow of the RSA.

Reviews

[Aja · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was not really incredibly helpful to me. It was hard to draw a line from A to Z with the examples that were given through out. And to be frank, it was a little boring. I'm happy to be done with it but I really can't tell you what I learned.

[Dee · Rating 4 out of 5]

A simple book discussing how people and brands adapt to changing individual or customers needs and situations. Toyota, PepsiCo, Bach-y-Rita and Hitler are all discussed there. We all an innate capability of adaptability and to do it effectively means learning from mistakes, experimentation.. and if a company rushes to adapt and loses sight of their goals, radical leadership and decisions might be the only option.

[Tanya · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book was a bit too long for the message it tried to communicate. It was a bit tedious to read at times. I wish the examples were a bit more current. Talking about brands that have been in the market for hundreds of years has been done in many other books (and do I dare say, done in a better way!).